"DEAD", "DAD", and "Bed" Leads
The messages "Dead", "Dad", and "Bed" were left for twitter user "The Door and The Key" (DAK) by Sarah B. before her disappearance. Lead Origin The leads were handwritten, presumably by Sarah B., in a copy of Carson McCullers' "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter." It is DAK's neighbor's copy of the book. #The first message, "DEAD", is written on the title page of the book. #The second message, "DAD", is written on page 221. #The third message, "Bed", is written on page 309. The lettering of the first two messages are stacked one on top of the other, with each letter underlined. They both appear in the upper right hand corner of the page. The lead, "Bed", is the only lead not fully capitalized, and appears in a line break at the end of a paragraph part way down. Further Information DAK claims that the neighbor whose book the messages appear in has seemed rather "stand-offish" recently. The message "Bed", while written quite legibly, is the only message not written in the stacked, underlined format. This discrepency has led DAK to question the corectness of this message. On page 309, under the message "Bed", a sentence is highlighted in pink. It reads "'You tried to write so much in the signs that no one will read everything." Unknowns It is not known why the neighbor seems to be on edge. Nothing is known of the neighbor other than that she owns the copy of "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter". This includes any knowledge of here usual disposition by comparison. Also unknown is Sarah's relationship with DAK's neighbor, and how (or if) Sarah had access to the book. DAK hopefully assumes that Sarah wrote the messages due to her dangerous relationship with her father, and the messages inclusion of the words "DEAD" and "DAD". While no better explanation has been offered, Sarah's authorship of the messages remains unconfirmed. It is unknown when the messages were written. It is assumed, but not confirmed, that they were intended to be discovered by DAK. No explanation has been offered describing how DAK discovered these messages, or how the author intended DAK to find them (if they were intended for DAK's eyes.) The significance and meaning in the messages is not yet known, although DAK and users have speculated that there appears to be hidden meaning to them. It is not known if "Bed" is the correct third message, or if it was intended for inclusion in the messages. There is no information concerning the highlighted text on page 309, who highlighted it (although it was likely either the neighbor, or far more likely Sarah), and whether or not it was intended as part of the message. Theories and Analysis It has been speculated, by DAK and his twitter followers, that the messages have an obscured meaning. Attempts to uncover the meaning are as follows: *Text Encryption *#The messages are not encoded using a simple cipher (in which each letter in the ciphertext corresponds to a letter in the plaintext.) "Dead" and "Dad" each start and end in "D". No four and three letter words could be found that both start and end in the same letter. *#Attempts have been made to analyze the messages as if they were encoded in a shift cipher. These attempts have been unsuccessful, but were by no means exhaustive. While the use of a shift cipher seems unlikely, it cannot be ruled out with the current information available to those known to have tried. *#No known anagrams. *Data Encryption *#There does not appear to be sufficient characters in the messages to represent a set of coordinates, unless it was heavily compressed. This seems unlikely due to the difficulty in recovering data from the compression, if it is at all possible. *#There appear to be too many characters present in the second and third messages to represent a date or time. *Musical Representation *#All characters present are either As, Bs, Cs, and Ds. These are all names for musical notes. *#It is possible that all characters represent musical notes in a sequence. *#It is possible that each message represents a musical chord or interval. *#*"DEAD" would represent the "D Suspended 2nd" chord or the "A Suspended 4th" chord, although D is the most likely root. *#*"DAD", with the presence of the 1st, Perfect 5th, and 8th, would represent the Perfect 5th interval from D, or the Perfect 4th from A, although D is the most likely root. *#*"Bed" does not correspond with any musical chord. *#The mostly likely theory at this time is that the messages correspond to a sequence of musical notes or a chord progression in a song containing some hint of Sarah B.'s location or well-being. All above theories and attempts at analysis were made under the assumption that the all three messages, together, contain the hidden meaning. This, as speculated by DAK, might not be the case, and "Bed" may be isolated from the other two as a red herring, or independently containing its own information. If "Bed" is isolated from the other two messages, only "DEAD" and "DAD" remain. Crazy, I know, but perhaps her father has shuffled this mortal coil and is now... something else, possibly explaining his homicidal tendencies. Note Sorry I didn't post the images of the messages :( Uncertain as to whether or not they contain copywritten material. I'd really love to see them up here, but if they make it here, it won't be my doing. Category:Images